Today’s tip for making paper quilled jewelry is about helping your piece to look as polished and professional as possible.

It is simple, but you need to pay attention to it while you’re working.

When you finish rolling your strip, you glue down the end. At the place you glue down your end it can be a bit unsightly. The first thing to remember for a smoother look is to tear the end of the strip before gluing it down (it’s easiest if you tear the end before you even start rolling the strip!). By doing this you will get a smoother end as the torn edge will glue down smoothly without leaving a little edge bump.

However, that torn edge can *still* be seen.

Sometimes you really can’t help it. There are jewelry designs where the outside strip isn’t covered by anything, so you can’t have the option of hiding it. So just do the best you can to rip it and get it glued down smoothly: (find the free tutorial for this spiral jewelry here)

There are other designs where you can easily hide the end. When you are making flowers, for example, make sure the end of the strip is near the point of the teardrop when you do the pinching for the petals. That way when you glue the petals in, the ends will be hidden in the parts that are glued together. So as long as you are careful in your pinching, you won’t see ANY ends of strips when you make flower designs such as this one: (find the tutorial for these flowers here).

When you are adding detail pieces to your quilled jewelry, make sure that you put the glue where the end of the strip is. You can see the tops of these two pumpkin earrings here. The one on the left I was careful and added the glue to the side where the end of the strip is, so it is hidden. For the one on the right I just added glue anywhere, and therefore you can see the ends. Not nearly as polished or nice looking! (find the free tutorial for these pumpkin earrings here)